Anaheim or Moab?

Neither city is on the coast, but the gap between them is large. From Anaheim you can reach the wide surf beach at Huntington, the Balboa Peninsula at Newport and the coves of Laguna in about half an hour by car. Any of them makes a good half-day between park days, best from July to September when the water is warmest.

Moab is high desert, far from any sea. Cooling off there means the shallow pools of Mill Creek, Ken's Lake or a sandbar on the cold, fast Colorado, and for most visitors it means the motel pool after a hike.

Anaheim has more to eat, though not around the parks, where the choice is park counters, hotel restaurants and chains. The good food is in the suburbs. Brookhurst Street in Little Arabia has Lebanese and Yemeni bakeries, nearby Little Saigon has pho and banh mi, and the old packing district has a food hall.

Moab's Main Street feeds hungry hikers well enough with burgers, tacos, pizza and brewery food, plus a few more ambitious Southwestern dinners. There is no local cuisine to look for, and Utah's alcohol rules make having a drink with dinner more formal than visitors may expect.

Both are thin on culture, with Anaheim a little ahead. Disneyland is a genuine piece of American history: it was the first Disney park and the only one Walt Disney saw finished. A drive takes you to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda.

Moab has the small Museum of Moab and little else in town. Its rock art goes back further than anything in Orange County, though. Ancestral Puebloan and Fremont petroglyphs cover the cliffs along Potash Road and Kane Creek, minutes from Main Street.

After the fireworks, Anaheim still has somewhere to go. Bars on the promenade between the parks and in the resort plazas stay open after closing time, central Anaheim has brewpubs and cocktail bars, and the bars near the stadiums fill up on hockey and baseball nights. For clubs, though, you have to drive to Long Beach or Los Angeles.

Evenings in Moab are shorter still. A couple of brewpubs on Main Street fill with mountain bikers and rafters, there are no clubs, and the town is mostly asleep by eleven. After dark, the main attraction is a sky dark enough to show the Milky Way.

Moab is one of the world's great outdoor bases, and Anaheim cannot compete. Arches begins minutes from town, and the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands looks out over canyons cut by the Colorado and Green rivers. You can also ride the Slickrock Trail or the Whole Enchilada descent from the La Sal Mountains, raft the river or climb at Wall Street.

Anaheim's outdoors is gentler. There are chaparral trails in the Santa Ana Mountains, tide pools at Crystal Cove and whale-watching boats from Newport and Dana Point. It is pleasant and works in any season, but you need a car for all of it.

Anaheim is in the middle of Southern California. Hollywood, the Getty and Griffith Observatory are about an hour away, Long Beach has the Queen Mary and ferries to Catalina, Mission San Juan Capistrano is to the south and San Diego is about two hours away. Traffic is the only real drawback.

From Moab, most day trips are to more landscape. The towns within reach, Green River, Monticello and Bluff, are small. The best cultural day out is a long drive south to Edge of the Cedars and the stone towers of Hovenweep.

Anaheim is one of the best places anywhere for a family vacation. The two Disney parks stand side by side, Knott's Berry Farm is ten minutes away, family hotels are within walking distance of the gates, and rain rarely spoils a day. The drawbacks are the queues and needing a car for anything beyond the resort.

Moab works for school-age children who love scrambling on rocks. There are short walks to Sand Dune Arch, dinosaur tracks, gentle river floats and Junior Ranger programmes. Summer heat, unfenced drops and long drives make it a poor fit for toddlers.

Both depend on the car, but Anaheim gives you more choice. The resort district is walkable and has a shuttle network, so a trip that is only the parks needs no car, and trains from the transit centre near the stadium run to Los Angeles and San Diego. Moab's Main Street is easy on foot and a paved path runs to the Arches entrance. Beyond that there is no useful public transport, and many trailheads are up dirt tracks where a high-clearance vehicle helps.

Shopping in Anaheim means malls, but there is plenty of it. There is Disney merchandise in the resort, one of the country's largest luxury malls in Costa Mesa about 20 minutes south, and outlet centres in Orange.

Moab has no fashion shopping at all. Its Main Street sells bike and climbing gear, geodes and fossils from the rock shops, and Navajo jewellery and weavings in a few galleries.

Neither is cheap, and the money goes on different things. In Anaheim it goes on multi-day park tickets, hotels near the gates and food inside the parks. You can save by staying in a motel a short drive away and eating in the Vietnamese and Middle Eastern districts.

Moab's rooms are simple but expensive in spring and autumn, and rafting and jeep tours add up. The savings come from the landscape: one park pass covers a week, campgrounds cost little, the best hikes are free and winter is much cheaper.

Anaheim has far more live performance. Disney's water shows, parades and musicals fill most evenings, and the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa, about 20 minutes away, has the Pacific Symphony, touring Broadway shows and ballet. The arena also books big pop and rock tours.

In Moab, live performance comes mostly from the Moab Music Festival at the end of summer, with chamber concerts in canyon grottoes reached by boat. The rest of the year there is little more than a weekend band in a brewpub.

In Anaheim you rest at a hotel spa. In Moab, the desert does the job. Between park days in Anaheim, the larger resort hotels have pools and spas, and the suburbs have Korean-style day spas with saunas and scrubs. The calmest grounds and best spas are at the clifftop resorts around Laguna Beach and Dana Point, a drive away.

Moab has only a few small day spas and massage studios, mostly for sore legs after a day on the bike. What it offers instead is quiet: still evenings, and the cliffs turning red at sunset. For real seclusion, visitors book a remote ranch or a cabin in the La Sal Mountains.